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Trouble in Nepali Paradise

Away from the glare of global headlines, Nepal is grappling with a protracted constitutional crisis. If it is not resolved soon, the tourist mecca, sensitively situated between India and China, could once again be plunged into civil war.

NEW DELHI – Away from the glare of global headlines, Nepal is grappling with a constitutional crisis that could once again propel the tourist mecca, sensitively situated between India and China, into full-fledged conflict.

From 1996 to 2006, Nepal was wracked by a brutal civil war that pitted a Maoist insurgency against the long-ruling monarchy, whose powerful army initially enjoyed the support of the country's democratic political parties. Peace (brokered by India, with active United Nations support) came only after the Maoists and the democrats agreed in 2005 to establish a Constituent Assembly. The first election was held in 2008, two years after a “people's movement" forced King Gyanendra to abdicate.

In that election, the Maoists emerged as the largest party, winning 240 of the 601 seats. Then came long-established forces like the Nepali Congress, a social-democratic party modeled on its Indian namesake, and the moderate Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist-Leninist), which, despite its name, is committed to electoral politics within a democratic system. And new mobilized parties of Nepal's southern plains, representing the Madhesi people, won 80 seats on a platform of greater federalism, ensuring that no single party or grouping could dominate the assembly.

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Shashi Tharoor, a former UN under-secretary-general and former Indian Minister of State for Human Resource Development and Minister of State for External Affairs, is currently an MP for the Indian National Congress and Chairman of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on External Affairs. He is the author of Pax Indica: India and the World of the 21st Century.

Deputy Prime Minister is Bam Dev Gautam, Not K P Oli. Oli is the president of CPN (UML).
Nobody is adverse to consensual way to write the constitution but what if in case of no consensus? The most desirable option would be the democratic process.

Author comes with the Hard Reality. Every time Nepal falls on political crisis, It waits for Delhi to dictate. Prime minister Sushil Koirala is probably waiting for what CK Lal calls 'cloud intelligence' a term apparently used by Chairman (UCPN Maoist) Prachanda.

In the West Nepal used to have a romantic image of a "paradise", with its ancient culture and the Himalayas as a backdrop. It has been in political limbo since the abolition of its 239-year-old monarchy in 2008. A civil war fought by the Maoist rebels had left the country with more than 12,000 people dead and 100,000 people displaced. The country is already one of the world's poorest and relies heavily on tourism and foreign aid to stay afloat. Its dependence on trade with India is the main reason, why Shashi Tharoor worries about Nepal's stability.
Political instability has plagued Nepal since the end of the civil war. The UN mission, Unmin, established to monitor Nepal's peace process, ended after Nepal's warring political parties agreed not to extend its mandate in 2010. Unmin had been able to prevent both sides from breaking the peace process, but opposition said it sided with the Maoist rebels. India, fighting its own Maoist rebels within the country had tried to exclude the Maoists from power in Nepal, while backing the opposition.
Critics say India's interests in Nepal are controversial. Following the 1950 Indo-Nepal Treaty of Peace and Friendship, India is said to be intolerant to any foreign presence in Nepal, as this could pose a "possible challenge to its hegemony". Delhi seems to have special rights over Nepal's foreign policies. It had played a key role in advising members of the UN Security Council to end the Unmin in Nepal, saying this would only slow down the peace process there.
Since then Nepal has not been able to move forward and leave its bloody past behind. So far politicians have failed to agree on a new constitution - a key step to stability after a peace deal with the Maoists. They are also at odds over how to divide a "new, federal Nepal" into states, "along a north-south axis" or along ethnic lines.
As India and Nepal share "open borders" and India had "received millions of Nepali refugees during the civil war", Tharoor fears a "renewed conflict would destabilize India's hill districts, while leaving its Himalayan borders vulnerable to Chinese encroachment". Does he suggest Nepal would be the next "Tibet"?

India must learn its own lesson from previous injunctions imposed on Nepalese Congress Party...Todays polarization is a result of Indian encroachment on Nepalese political sovereignty. From days of Nehru...this extra-territorial involvement has been going on without democratic development and constitutional reforms.
Tharoor was a Min in Foreign Ministry in UPA government. He knows the domestic problems of Nepal are Indian-in-origin.

Modi's state visit simply reconfirmed this malignancy across the Himalayas inflicted by Indian politics.

Mr. Tharoor should be balanced in his analysis about neighboring country. I totally agree on two previous comments and reject the Author's arguments in many instances. However, most interesting to me is his conclusion that India must intervene via "strong diplomatic push" to help resolve so called conflict. The question in my mind is "Do India and international actors need to undermine constitutional and democratic process - accepted practice worldwide - to incorporate rejected agendas of the people? " "Were they waiting for their space to play in our constitutional process, so that they can undermine our democratic process or to undermine institutionalization of democracy in Nepal?" "Do international community or neighbor countries determine constitutional agenda of any country OR is it determined by peoples' verdict? Mr. Tharoor please be aware of these questions before claiming yourself an independent expert on any other country.

The article portrays much too gloomy picture of Nepalese political scenario and has many gross misinterpretations of the current situation. "... opposition parties have gained wide support for their position ..." among media, civil society leaders, activities etc. But the question is are those interest groups representative of the larger population? The answer is no, they do not exactly portray the sentiment of Nepalese citizen. And why has the international community ignored the recent political decree of people voiced through the elections? Why the political structure of the current constituent assembly being undermined, where the ruling parties hold around 2/3rd of the seats and opposition Maoists have only 80 seats? Shouldn't the Maoists respect the direct verdict of the people and adhere to the democratic norms?

It's insincere to listen to few interest groups and neglect the whole political structure to push the "unholy" foreign agenda over Nepalese politics. Yes, the Maoists are disenchanted with the democratic process as they were twenty years back, when they had left the parliament feeling no political strength due to their limited seats then. But now they should have learned why they came falling back to the third position in the assembly back from the first party during the first assembly. As the ruling coalition says, the second constituent assembly elections has shown that the people have now rejected Maoist's agenda of ethnicity based federalism, secularism and other radical political makeovers. But Maoists are still not ready to accept the people's verdict. They believe that they can still capture the state mechanism through violent means rather than through democratic political process.

It is absurd to see why a country whose 80% population are Hindus should declare itself a secular state? As various reliable media sources put that the agenda of secularism was pushed by the European diplomats where by Christian missionaries now have greater freedom for religious conversions all over Nepal. Similarly, ethnicity based federalism in a nation of more than 125 ethnic groups (none of them are majority) is already proscribed through elections. The only ethnic separatists voices are of the few disillusioned outlaws whose voices seem to be large particularly due to the media hype.

Many of the foreign analysts seem to be grossly apprehensive if the Chinese are sympathetic towards the Maoists and largely undermine the Indian role in escalating the Maoist insurgency in Nepal. There are numerous news reports and books written regarding Indian role in sheltering the Maoists leaders, providing them with insurgency trainings and political support during and after the insurgency period. The India must also be held accountable for current volatile state of affairs of Nepal.

It is undisputed that the constitution must be broadly acceptable to large section of the society. But a country cannot be held hostage for decades just to fulfill narrow interests of few political parties and personal interests of its sinister political leaders. Since the past six decades of democratic struggle, the Nepalese society has already accepted the democratic practice and thus political parties and the international communities must to adhere to the agendas approved through broad democratic processes. A pluralistic society which has been existence since centuries with geographical, cultural and religious harmony cannot now be fragmented on the outcast ideals of communalism and intolerance.

But it is India – which maintains open borders with Nepal, and received millions of Nepali refugees during the civil war – Wrong. Mr Thakur. Less than 50 thousand displaced people crossed the border, in the form of economic migrant to work in various Indian cities, which is common. No UNHCR or other national international agencies identified single Nepalese citizen as a refugees during the Maoist led People's War. A few thousand of them were displaced people not Refugees.
........., as renewed conflict would destabilize India's hill districts, while leaving its Himalayan borders vulnerable to Chinese encroachment. This is Indian fear psyche, it deeply fears China will come to India via Himalayan route, No, not at all. China will enter into India via it's eastern chicken neck states, Pakistan and via south Indian Ocean

In this context, India must make a strong diplomatic push to help resolve the conflict, even at the risk of fueling resentment among Nepalese, who are wary of foreign interference. Good, India should try and reign on a few Terai based parties plus show carrots to Maoist leaders Baburam and sticks to Prachanda - so that they will participate in the constitutional process that is already in place.

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